


Stairs

by Corvid_Knight



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dave Has Issues, M/M, he's working through them, meteorfic?, my tumblr is knight-of-heart-and-art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 13:23:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12865395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: trauma (noun): emotional shock following a stressful event or a physical injury, which may be associated with physical shock and sometimes leads to long-term neurosis.





	Stairs

You didn't mean to. That's one of the fucking thousand thoughts knotting into one painful tangled ball in your head right now. Or maybe it's in your chest. That'd explain why you all of a sudden can't breathe. 

You didn't mean to push him. Not hard enough for him to trip like that, end up swearing and picking himself up at the bottom of the stairs. It was a fucking joke, neither of you were actually laughing but you were baiting him and he was growling invective at you, and he grabbed for your shades (a joke, he wasn't going to do anything, god) and you reacted.

You shoved him. 

He's standing at the foot of the stairs and you look at him for one second, enough to see that he's bitten his lip or something and it's bleeding, there's blood on it, and you can't. You can't fucking look. You can't breathe either. 

You know exactly what you just did and oh god you shouldn't have. You hurt him. You. Hurt. Karkat. There's a fucking twisted déjà vu here, too. You can't believe this. You can't fucking believe that you're enough like—

"Dave, what the fuck. Come on, we're already late." 

How the hell does he sound that normal? Annoyed, but nothing else. 

You open your eyes (why did you even bother closing them? because you're too much of a coward to look at what you did?) and he's just standing there, looking up at you and wiping impatiently at his mouth with his sleeve. How the hell does he not look upset, angry, afraid, anything like that? 

Well, he's starting to look a bit confused as well as annoyed, since you can't bring yourself to move. "Dave, what's going on?" 

Somehow you can't exactly answer that question. You shake your head instead, closing your eyes for a second and not looking right at him when you open them, not that he can tell. "Fuck. Sorry." Too bad your voice is a hell of a lot shakier than you ever let it get when you're in control of yourself. "I'm. I'm sorry." Apologising does not, actually, make it better, and you know that. Hell, haven't you been on the other side of this? 

"For what? I'm a clumsy asshole, we both know that. And I'm fine." You can hear the frown in his voice as he climbs the six or seven stairs up to you, stopping on the one below where you're at and tilting his head back to look up at you. "Dave, I'm fine. It was an accident, I tripped." 

"I fucking pushed you." Your eyes are closed again. Coward. "I'm—"

What are you? Sorry? Yeah, that's one of the things you might've said, but he reaches up and puts his hands on the sides of your face, pushing your shades up, and you have to either open your eyes or let him think you don't want to look at him. You have to go with the former. 

He still doesn't look mad. Sad, maybe. Or worried. You suck so bad at reading normal people. 

"It was an accident," he says, calm and level, like you hardly ever see from him. "An accident. There's a difference between trying to hurt someone and fucking up a little. It's okay." 

"I—" 

Again he doesn't let you finish the sentence. "Sit the fuck down before you fall down," he not-quite-snaps, and pulls you down to sit next to him on the stairs. You don't really want to sit down, but the alternative is pulling away from him, and no way in hell are you going to fight him right now. "It's okay."

If you argue, you're just going to stammer and lose your sentences completely. So you shake your head and work on composing yourself, which is a hell of a lot harder than it should be. 

It takes a couple minutes for you to calm down and relax enough to realize that you're leaning on his shoulder. Which is. Okay. It's okay. 

"I'm sorry," you tell him. "I swear I'd never pull that shit on you on purpose, dude, I—" 

"Dave. I know. It's okay." He huffs out a breath, reaching up and touching your lips gently with one finger, effectively silencing you as you open your mouth again. "Stop. You didn't mean it, we both know that. You gonna admit what's fucking you up right now?" 

To him? No. To yourself? Yeah. You kind of have to. 

"I know what's fucked up," you admit, when he takes his hand away from your mouth. 

"Okay. And it's not you." He frowns at you when you shake your head. "You're not the fucking problem here. This was a fucking accident, a little stupid one that barely hurt anything." 

"It's still—" Your fault, you're going to point out, but he cuts you off. 

"Quit trying to make yourself think you're him, asshole. You're not. You don't have to be. You're not going to be. It's okay." He scowls at you for the few seconds that you're struggling for something to say, then shakes his head. "You believe me?" 

"I trust you," you tell him, immediately, because it's the goddamn truth. Maybe not the answer to his question, but the truth. 

"Alright. You okay to head in and see the others?" 

"Yeah." 

By the time you open the door from the hall to the main room you are, mostly, over it. You're still conscious of the fact that the two of you are late and that he's more scruffed-up than usual, but when Rose looks over and raises an eyebrow it's not all that hard to pull up a grin. 

"Hey, sorry, I was doing shit—" Fuck, she's going to ask what kind of shit. Except Karkat interrupts you before she can. 

"He pushed me down the fucking stairs." But he glances over at you and lets you see his small smile as he says it. What he doesn't say is that it's okay. 

You can hear it, though. And when nobody else is looking you smile back at him for a second. Later, you'll need to tell him thank you.

**Author's Note:**

> he's not over Bro's shit yet but Karkat's willing to help him work it out


End file.
